‘Prima donna in pigtails’: reading the child stardom of Julie Andrews

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the juvenile career of Julie Andrews who was a child performer of considerable note in her native Britain during the immediate post-war period. Possessed of a remarkably developed singing voice, Andrews was feted as a musical child prodigy, and she performed widely in variety and radio as ‘Britain’s youngest singing star’. In an era of profound disruption, Andrews’ popular image as national wunderkind served – as the myth of the child star so often it does – as a resonant cultural fiction for the articulation of deeply felt ideological concerns and the fantastic reconciliation of social and emotional anxieties.